The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Planet PDF

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
I WAS born in the year 18 — to a large fortune,
endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature
to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good
among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been
supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and
distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults
was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has
made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to
reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high,
and wear a more than commonly grave countenance
before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed
my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection,
and began to look round me and take stock of my
progress and position in the world, I stood already
committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man
would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was
guilty of; but from the high views that I had set before
me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense
of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my
aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults,
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